LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

who come to call.”

      “Only Charley Meredith,” said Julia. “And,” she added, subduing her tones, “if he came in the morning I should not mind: but he comes at night without being invited, with his music, as if mamma was obliged to have him whether she liked or not. And he gives himself such airs, as if he knew that Gussy—you think I don’t care for Gussy, Miss Summerhayes—but I do. I could kill her when she looks silly like that! A woman! to let a man see that she——oh! I could kill her when she looks at him like that!”

      “That is a pleasant way of showing how much you care for her,” said Janet. “It is quite natural that at fourteen you should think you know best; but if I hear you hiss again,”—the governess kissed the tips of her fingers—“good-bye, my dear; that’s all that there will be to say.”

      “You say that to beat me down,” cried Julia. “You don’t really care, not a bit, whether I behave myself or not. I am not sure that you are any better than Charley Meredith. I don’t know that there is not just a pair of you. Well, then, do it if you like, there! take him away from Gussy, break everybody’s heart, make Dolff think me a stupid for all I’ve said. I can see in your eyes that’s what you’d like to do.”

      “You have made me out a very pretty programme,” said Janet, laughing. “I think I shall begin by looking over your exercises, and giving you double black marks for everything. We need not have come upstairs so early but for that pretty habit of yours; and, for my part, I would rather listen to the music than to a little girl storming. Oh, yes, my dear, I know you are taller than I am, but that makes no difference. Be quiet; we can hear it mounting up now that I’ve opened the window a little. Ah! bravo! that was well done.”

      “Do you really care for that squalling?” Julia demanded, with a mixture of wonder and scorn.

      Janet was standing by the window which she had opened. The school-room was over the drawing-room, though on the second floor, and in the quiet of the night Mr. Meredith’s fine voice came out like the blast of a silver trumpet. The night was mild and very still, and perhaps Janet’s youthful bosom was still a little fluttered by that sudden surprise which had made her heart beat. She leaned a little out, listening, with a natural self-pity that she was not there, and realization of the different fate of Gussy, to whom music and love and all the softnesses of life were open, while she was sent away out of sight with a naughty child. Janet had far too much strength to give in or permit anyone to see that she suffered from this, nor, indeed, did she suffer more than the vague and momentary sensation of being at a disadvantage. But she leaned out to listen with a little wistfulness, impatient of the childish vehemence, and as yet but little awakened to the deeper nature of her unmanageable pupil. This pensive mood, however, was soon to be interrupted. In the very midst of the liquid notes ascending from below, there came suddenly, as if it rent the air, a wild and wailing cry—the cry as of a spirit in pain. It seemed to Janet to rise almost from her side, close by. She started back from the window and turned round with a scared and terrified exclamation,

      “What is that? What is that?”

      For a moment it occurred to her that some terrible accident or hurt must have happened to the girl by her side.

      “I—don’t know,” said Julia, stammering as if she could not get out the words. But she was not terrified as Janet was. The governess did not notice this at first in her own panic. She ran to the door of Julia’s room, from which direction the sound seemed to come, and flung it open crying, “Who is there? Who is there?” then shut it again in terror of what she might see.

      “Oh, run and fetch some one! oh, go and alarm the house, Julia! there must be something dreadful in there.”

      “There’s nothing,” said Julia. “What are you making such a fuss about? It’s—a boy outside—they make such hideous noises—it’s——”

      She stopped, for the same sound was repeated, this time lower and further off, as it seemed—a cry of pain dropping into a low prolonged wail. Janet rushed to the school-room door and out upon the staircase, calling for help, for some one to come. She was wild with alarm. There was no doubt in her mind that some wretched creature, a madman, probably, had got into the rooms.

      But all was quiet in the house below, the doors all shut, everybody occupied with their own business, singing going on in the drawing-room, talk in the servants’ apartments downstairs—nothing it would seem had been disturbed but Janet alone.

      “It’s nothing,” repeated Julia. “Oh, Miss Summerhayes, come back, please, and don’t make a fuss. Mamma is so angry if there’s any fuss made. If I go into my room and look all round, and convince you there’s nobody, will that do? There’s nobody, I know. It’s either a boy passing outside, or it’s an owl or something that lives under the ivy in the wing. Mamma knows. If you ask her to-morrow she’ll tell you; but, oh, for goodness’ sake, Miss Summerhayes, don’t make a fuss to-night.”

      “Your mother knows? Do you mean that—it has been heard before?”

      “You look as if you thought it was a ghost,” said Julia, who, however, was very pale. “We have no ghosts in our house.”

      “It was like the cry of a mad creature—it was——Julia, if it comes again I can’t bear it. It must be some madman who has got in.”

      “If it’s a madman he can’t get near us,” cried Julia, “for he’s in the wing.”

      Janet came back into the school-room, still trembling with her fright. She dropped into a chair, unable to support herself.

      “You know—you know what it is,” she said, faintly.

      “I know—it’s something in the wing. It does no harm. Sometimes it will cry like that—oh, once in a year, perhaps. It can’t do any harm. Oh, Miss Summerhayes, do be reasonable when I tell you. What does it matter? I don’t know what you mean, to be so taken up with their squalling and shouting, and in such a state when you hear a cry. I don’t care either for one or the other,” Julia said.

      It cannot be said that Janet showed much interest in the “squalling and shouting” of which her pupil was so contemptuous after this. The two changed their rôles completely for the rest of the evening, during which Julia, though not without a titter for her companion’s weakness, soothed and patronized Miss Summerhayes, and addressed to her many philosophical admonitions, which naturally were much more self-confident even than the exhortations of Janet, in themselves by no means deficient in the certainty of youth.

      “What can it matter to us,” said Julia, “what a noise is?—unless you happen to like noises which people make, squalling at the top of their voices and call music. A noise can’t hurt you; it can’t do you any harm. You hear it, and that’s all—especially when it’s only like a voice. I am not fond of thunder, myself, for a thunderbolt might fall on the house or crush you; but a cry—what does it matter? People are always crying out, or making some nasty noise. You should pay no attention to it. I never pay any attention; it is not worth while. Why, you might spend your life thinking of such things, if you were to be disturbed by every sound you hear.”

      This discourse did not satisfy Janet or even calm her mind, but she reflected after a while that it was not the part of a governess to put visionary terrors into the mind of her pupil, and so far recovered herself with an effort as to satisfy Julia that it was safe to go to bed and leave Miss Summerhayes. Poor little Janet, when left alone, felt for the first time how terrible it was to be so young, so impressionable, and among strangers. She dared not run downstairs, as a girl at home would, to shake off her terrors by confiding them to some one who could authoritatively calm and reassure her. Mrs. Harwood had been very kind to her governess, but to go down again after she had been dismissed, to meet Gussy’s astonished look turning round from the piano, and the mother’s suspicious glance which would ask what she wanted, why she came?—was impossible to Janet. She felt to-night, for the first time, what it was to be a governess, although to-night, for almost the first time, she had realized what she had expected when she came out into the world, how amusing it was to watch

Скачать книгу